EDUCATOR

Teaching, designing lesson plans, and working with students has a lot in common with making media. There’s no better way to learn a thing than by telling a story about it. And being able to tell a good story has really come in handy when creating educational frameworks for STEM content.

As a part of a National Science Foundation grant, I developed and taught a STEM science communication course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which provided graduate students with tools to turn research into visual media. At New York University, I guest lectured about how to make science videos for a Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting class.

Also, I was a National Park ranger at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge along the coast in Queens, New York. I developed lesson plans, produced educational materials, and led classes about urban ecology and climate change for NYC school kids. I worked closely with park non-profit partners like the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, too.

For National Geographic Student Expeditions, I taught high schoolers nature photography in Yellowstone National Park (which is where I took that photo of the bison). And I worked with grade school kids at a housing development in East New York, Brooklyn to help them photograph scenes of their neighborhood.

I made this National Park Service video to prepare students for a phenology class I taught at the wildlife refuge.